Love Crime (2022)

I got wind of this film through an email from Shane Ryan-Reid's Mad Scinema Productions back in July, and I was excited to check it out. Unfortunately a few things came up and I was delayed by a couple months, but we're here now, making this happen for our September indie post.

Love Crime stars Nicole D'Angelo (who also directed) as Jodi, based somewhat on Jodi Arias, who believes God sent her Travis (Ryan-Reid), a guy who does self-help seminars. She thinks he's perfect for her, but Travis sees her as a nice girl who's great to spend time with and hook up with. As things get more serious on Jodi's side, Travis finds he can't get out as easily as he thinks, and things only get worse for him as Jodi's mental condition worsens. When she ultimately snaps and kills Travis, she discovers the criminal justice system isn't as easy to persuade as Travis was.

This is packaged like a true crime film, and what I was expecting was Cinema Epoch meets true crime, which sounded like a lot of fun, but what I got was something much more. D'Angelo and Cinema Epoch take the true crime film and turn it on its ear. This isn't a Lifetime movie of the week, "The Long Island Lolita" with D'Angelo as the Alyssa Milano or Tori Spelling femme fatale. And Ryan-Reid isn't your run of the mill Bryan Austen Green boy next door who falls victim to said femme fatale. Beyond the storytelling style, which works in a nonlinear way to tell us the ending first, but make the suspense the "how do we get there?", we have a dynamic between D'Angelo and Ryan-Reid that takes the black and white we usually see in true crime dramas, and melds it into a bunch of gray. D'Angelo's Jodi isn't totally unsympathetic, and Ryan-Reid's Travis is boy next door in the realer sense in that he's not always that nice. It's not so much a metacriticism of the true crime genre, as it's exploiting it, the way true crime films often exploit the victims involved, and I appreciated that approach.

How D'Angelo plays Jodi is a huge factor in why this worked for me. The way she'd have Jodi's voice change ever so slightly when she thinks she's losing Travis in order to get him to come back to her, making herself sound a little more vulnerable when she needs to be, or a little more seductive when she needs to be. How D'Angelo does it though, it's not that Jodi's manipulative, it's a defense mechanism she's developed over time as a way to manage in her world, and we see her using it in court or in prison, expecting the same effect as she gets with Travis, but the criminal justice system can't be manipulated like that. One of my favorite scenes was when Jodi's reading her bible, and she hears a knock at the door, and says "thank you," meaning she's thanking God for sending Travis over. It wasn't a dramatic "thank you," it was more a thanking a friend for doing you a favor, showing the relationship Jodi thinks she has with God. Again, usually the true crime femme fatale is unhinged in a black and white villain kind of way, and I liked how D'Angelo subverted that in the way she depicted Jodi.

That bleeds perfectly (no pun intended) in with how Ryan-Reid plays Travis. He's not a total bro, but there's enough bro there to make it work, enough of him thinking he's the man that he thinks he has everything under control. When Jodi's voice changes that little bit after Travis starts to put some distance between them, and he decides "why not, let's hook up again?", he thinks he's consciously making that decision. By the same token, Ryan-Reid never plays Travis so bad that he deserves his fate, which is also really important. The thing I always like about seeing him in these Cinema Epoch productions is the sense of danger he adds to movies that already feel dangerous in the style they're made, but here he exudes that danger in a different way, the manic energy is more under the surface and drawing Jodi in, like her character is feeding off it so we hit this inevitable conclusion. Again, not enough to make us feel like Jodi was justified in killing him, but enough for us to get why it all happens.

Lisa London is another Cinema Epoch mainstay who appears in this, and while she has a very small part, for me it really tied together this subversion of the true crime genre, as she's the closest thing to a character in one of those films. My parents watch a lot of those true crime shows on ID or whatever, and while I have trouble with something like that that often depicts grizzly murders, when I'm up in New England visiting them, I find I have to listen to them while I'm in the living room getting a coffee refill or making myself a sandwich, and Lisa London is that detective in those shows who solves everything, and brings the baddie to justice. We trust her on that kind of show when she tells us that they found who the killer was because his car had the same tire tracks as the tire tracks near the swamp where they found the victim's body, and while we have no idea if that science is sound, there is no Marisa Tomei winning an Oscar to tell us those couldn't be the tire tracks despite what the state's expert on the stand says, so we have to trust the detective that they have their man and he's going to fry. She has no sympathy for Jodi, in her world Jodi is played by Tori Spelling in the movie of the week, and London's is played by Vivica A. Fox in that same film, no nonsense, boots up on the table, telling her detective friend she likes her coffee bitter like the truth, and making sure he isn't falling for Jodi's charms when she thinks he might be cracking. We needed London's character as the thread to tie this movie to the genre it's trying to subvert.

Back in 2014 or '15, my wife Jen and I watched a Netflix documentary on the Pamela Smart story. It was both a look back on that case, and a commentary on the true crime sensationalism that happens with cases like these, and how in that rush to exploit and sensationalize, we never truly get the whole story. That one was big for me, because I grew up near where it happened, and at the time, we all took for granted that Smart convinced her high school student boyfriend and his friends to murder her husband, and the documentary we watched shoots a lot of holes in that theory we all took for granted. I told my mom about it, and while she yes'd me for a few minutes, when I was done, as if she didn't hear a thing I'd said, responded with "it was horrible how she manipulated those kids to kill her husband like that." In that sense, I may have been particularly sensitive to what D'Angelo and co. were going for here--we even had the Lisa London cop, the detective who arrested Pamela Smart was so proud of himself in that documentary when told the filmmakers how he told her "I have good news and bad news, the good news is we found your husband's killer, that bad news is, it's you." It makes "if truth is bitter, my coffee should be" sound circumspect by comparison.

And with that, let's wrap this up. In the US you can get this on Tubi and Plex, so perhaps outside the US it's available too. If you're a fan of true crime, this may not be for you, despite the fact that it's packaged like a true crime drama. If you're looking for something different from that though, at just over an hour and available free on streaming, this is worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15410936

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Blood Street (1988)

This is one that's been in the can for a while, because I watched it way back when I did the Leo Fong episode of the Comeuppance Reviews podcast. I had the review scheduled for this date, and didn't even realize that it was coming after my work trip out to San Francisco, so there's some fun synergy there. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have done this too.

Blood Street is about two rival gangs in San Francisco that are in the midst of a bloody war, one side run by an Italian mob boss and his two enforcers, Stack Pierce and Chuck Jeffrys, the other run by DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton. When the Italian guy's wife is trying to track him down, she hires Leo Fong, reprising his Sam Spade role of Joe Wong from Low Blow. No ham sandwiches here, but when Fong's involved, all bets are off, and as he starts to unravel what's happening here between these two gangs, he's getting himself in deeper--but that's worse for the baddies, not Fong. He's cleaning up these blood streets, and when he's done with them they'll never be the same! (Totally didn't rip that off the box tagline...)

This is a fun Fong joint, especially as a companion to Low Blow. Fong knows how to get after it, and guys like Norton, Pierce, and Jeffreys deliver as well. It has the hallmarks of a Fong film, not just with the budget and one-liners, but great martial arts and action. It's a bit on the brutal side, with the rival gangs massacring each other in ways that could hurt our modern US mass shooting sensitivities, but in 1988 the idea of someone going into a room with an assault rifle and taking out everyone inside wasn't considered a natural occurrence like it is now, it was the cartoonish over-the-top violence it was meant to be. On top of that, the San Francisco backdrop does a nice job mitigating the low-quality film stock used to shoot the film. This is the fun 80s Fong actioner you came for.

After doing our mini Rothrock celebration for her joining the 40 Club, it's only fitting that the next review after would be of her longtime collaborator and fellow DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton. He's on the cover of this one, but it's really Fong's film, and the cover having Norton like that is deceptive. He's not a hero cleaning up the streets of San Francisco, he's a baddie making them worse. This is now 23 films for him at the DTVC, but our first of his since May of 2021's review of The Kick Fighter. How did it take so long between Norton flicks? To be fair, we had two podcast episodes in September on Cynthia Rothrock movies that also talked about him a bunch, since he was in all 4 films as well, but still, a guy like Norton should have reviews more frequently, at least until we can get him into the 30 Club. What we get from him here is that late 80s DTV action stalwart who was one of the names that truly made the late 80s to early 90s the golden age it was. One of the best to do it, and we just need to get more of his flicks on the site to show that.

 

With Fong we're at even less, as this is his fourth film on the site. For me it's been a matter of getting into more of his stuff, and with the episode of Comeuppace I did on his films, I was given that impetus to finally make that happen. Fong's films, especially his ones from this period, are the kind of fun low-budget actioners that just have all the elements you need to work. Funny dialog, great martial arts, shootings and explosions, and the periodic goofiness that just ties it all together. Him playing this Sam Spade detective, complete with the hat and voice-overs, works in a way that's difficult to describe unless you've watched his stuff and understand the vibe he goes for in his films. I've just scratched the surface of the Fong-ster, so it'll be a fun ride as we discover his stuff together.

We had a great team up here of two other 80s/90s DTV actioner mainstays, Stack Pierce and Chuck Jeffreys. I think Pierce is playing Jeffrey's father, which didn't seem right for their ages, but when I looked them up, Pierce was born in '33, and Jeffreys in '58, so it actually worked. These two are common in Fong films, and they're great in this one as the Italian gangster's two main hatchet men. I think as far as getting more of their stuff up, for Jeffreys it'll definitely be in more Fong films, but with Pierce, he wasn't just a mainstay in Fong films, but he also did some Williamson films as well, so as we continue our mission to get more Williamson on the site, we'll be seeing more Pierce as well. They're the kind of guys who enhance a film like this, which is why these kinds of movies worked better than their modern counterparts.

As I mentioned above, I'm just getting back from a quick work trip to San Francisco. Not only has the city changed a lot since this film was made, it's changed a lot since I was there for an anthropology convention as an undergrad in 2000. The tech boom came in and raised the cost of living to such a degree that only New York in the US is more expensive to live in. It would be interesting to see a Blood Streets remade in this new environment. Maybe rival tech start-up gangs massacring each other. Stack Pierce and Fong are no longer with us, but Norton and Jeffreys as the baddie leaders? It could be a great antidote to the standard streaming service mini-series on whatever tech start-up billionaire that eventually crashed "spectacularly" played by this or that actor that everyone on Twitter is buzzing about. Maybe the detective could be played by Mark Dacascos--he could be a Hawaiian making sense of modern San Francisco. The script writes itself.

While more Fong is making it to streaming services, this one is currently only available on YouTube. The quality isn't great, but you could do a lot worse for a Saturday night, and hopefully soon we'll get that Blu-ray we deserve. Also, if you go into the Comeuppance archives, episode 67, "The Fong Show," is the one where we discussed his films.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131979

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece (2018)

In furthering our celebration of Cynthia Rothrock joining the 40 Club, I figured I'd finally give this one a look. Not only does it have her, but two other 30 Club actors, Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Michael Dudikoff. On the other hand, for a film with all these names, it seemed suspicious that none of the other usual suspects had covered this, and it only had two critic reviews and 10 user reviews. Let's see if the suspicions were warranted.

Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece is, beyond being a difficult title to type, an attempted send-up of old grindhouse movies about a guy named the Fist who hilariously is both a martial arts fighter and a former porn star--trust me, I'm laughing on the inside. Stuff happens though, and he finds he has to fight people, along with a couple friends, and eventually that leads him to the head baddie, played by Michael Dudikoff. Other stuff happens, including a lot of dick jokes, fights, and all kinds of computer generated video effects, for roughly an hour and 40 minutes, and then for 7 minutes more stuff happens as the credits roll. But it does have a lot of names that make cameos, so there's that.

Between my 4th and 5th years of college--yes, I took five years to get my BA--I dated a girl who had two kids, one that wae three, and the other not quite two. One of the times I was over there, the mother was changing the not quite two-year-old, and while she was getting the diaper, he got away and started peeing. He was so fascinated that urine was coming out of his penis, that he ran over to show me, and I was like "yeah, it does that, isn't that crazy?" Beyond the fact that it's hard to think that that almost two-year-old is old enough to drink now, this movie smacked of a couple guys who just learned what their penis can do, and watching it, I felt like the adult saying "yes, it does that, isn't that crazy?" It wasn't just that the film was full of dick jokes, but they were like "penises are so great, I can't believe I'm just learning about mine!" Whether they were dick jokes or other kinds of jokes, they often didn't quite come off like they should have, and when they did hit, they didn't know when to stop. It was like if you've ever been at a party and told a joke everyone thought was funny, and another guy there thinks he's funny too, so he follows you around and tells you a bunch of jokes that for the most part don't work, but when one lands he goes back to that well over and over, and you're just trying to get away. There were some fun moments though. I think had it been shorter, had a comedic writer helped with the jokes, and if the two stars--one of whom was director and co-writer, the other of whom was the other writer--had not been in it and they left the film to the stars they cast, it might have worked. Unfortunately for me it was a miss, and I guess that's why it doesn't have more buzz considering those names.

Because I'm including this as part of the celebration for Rothrock joining the 40 Club, I'll start with her, even though she's barely in the movie. She has one quick fight scene, which was good, but we could've had more. For example, we had Jean-Claude Van Damme's daughter Bianca Brigitte, why didn't we have a fight scene between those two? That would've been more compelling than a lot of what we ended up with. Also, the big plot device was that our Fist character eats meatballs that have estrogen in them, and he loses his mojo. So too much estrogen means someone can't kick ass? Beyond the fact that that kind of joke was more appropriate in the 90s, how can you have kickass women like Rothrock and Bianca Van Damme and say that our hero ingesting estrogen makes him weak? I'll take the Pepsi challenge with Rothrock's stuff over this any day.

 

Close on Rothrock's heels for his own inclusion in the 40 Club, we're now at 38 for Don "The Dragon" Wilson--though it seems like two films we tagged him in, Saigon Commandos and The Siege of Firebase Gloria, have been removed from his IMDb bio, so he may only be at 36. In this he has a bigger part than Rothrock, which is nice. He played a fun send-up to the 70s Hong Kong martial arts master. I'd be interested to see how he did with more of these roles, like maybe something done by Michael Jai White who has a good mix of a keen sense of humor and fantastic martial arts skills. In Black Dynamite he had some send-ups to the old martial arts movie that came off really well, and the way Wilson carried his part off here, it would be fun to see what they could do together. As far as the 40 Club for him, he has three movies on Tubi that I can do, so that'll be easy to get one more--Scorpion King 4 is one I've seen, but didn't get any images before it was removed from Tubi, so I'm waiting for it to come around again. The question then is, where could he go from there? He's making more stuff, so we could potentially get another 10 movies from there, it's just a matter I guess of how many more older ones get dropped from IMDb for technically not having him in them.

We last saw Michael Dudikoff here back in January of 2020, and that was the first time since we'd done In Her Defense in 2011. This is now 33 films for him--he has 34 tags because we did American Ninja 2 twice--and I don't see us getting that many more unless he has a greater outburst of films, but that may be okay for him, he's already given us a lot of greats. His role here as the main baddie was one of the few real standouts in this to me. The Joker make-up combined with the maniacal nature, I'd love to see him do more crazy baddies in DTV flicks. Like if they ever made a DTV Expendables, where maybe you have Rothrock, Wilson, and Daniels as the heroes, they could have Fred Williamson as the Machine Gun Joe type, and Dudikoff as the baddie, and maybe Matthias Hues as his hatchet man. Oh, maybe add in Dacascos with that trio of heroes too. Should we tack on Gruner too? Anyway, let's get this DTV Expendables made, and load up all those names in a film all us DTV action fans can enjoy.

Finally, making a movie a comedy sometimes has the effect of insulating it from criticism. "Of course that was bad, you just don't get the joke, we made it bad on purpose!" I get that, and the point could be made that I just didn't get the humor here, or it wasn't my style. It just seemed like overall there wasn't a lot of cohesion, people just show up, there's a bunch of close-ups and sound effects, then they fight and CGI blood appears, and then we go to more things happening that make no sense, close-ups and sound effects, and more fights and CGI blood splatters. In once scene, there's this fight at the bagel burger place the hero and his friends work at, and he does this back kick thing to the baddies over and over. I get repeating the scene if you only have 60 minutes of footage and need to stretch things, but the movie was an hour and 47 minutes! It needed to cut things, not extend the joke. Another scene, the director's character kicks a baddie holding a gun, which causes the baddie to shoot another baddie. It was funny, but then they repeat it. Again. And again. Like over ten times. And it's like "it's hilarious, the guy keeps getting shot with CGI blood splatters and he's yelling in pain!" Going back to Black Dynamite or Machete and why those worked, I think a big part of it was the people making those lived in the 70s and 80s during the Grindhouse era, so they got the vibe better, whereas the guys making this were younger, more my age, and there was almost a sense that they were trying to remake Machete or Black Dynamite more. For me, this would've worked at 80 minutes, played a little bit straighter, but still as a comedy, with Don Frye's character as the hero. Just get rid of the characters played by the director and his co-writer, maybe do 30% of the dick jokes--which may still be more dick jokes than any other movie--and let the guest stars, of which there were many, do their things.

But ultimately we didn't get that, and what we did get didn't work for me. As of this writing you can get this on Tubi here in the States. Maybe if you're a completist of the stars like me, you make it happen, otherwise beware the siren song of all these names calling you in. It seems this was ignored by the usual suspects for a reason.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2490148

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Ba Wong Fa aka Top Squad aka Inspector Wears Skirts (1988)

This is it, with this post Cynthia Rothrock joins the illustrious DTVC 40 Club, the second-most exclusive club on the site after the 50 Club. She's also only the third actor to get in, after Dolph and Gary Daniels, and the first woman to make the club. When I saw that this movie was on Tubi, I figured it would make a good one for her 40th post. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have done this one as well.

Inspector Wears Skirts has Sibelle Hu and Cynthia Rothrock as two top cops on the Hong Kong police squad. After an attack on a visiting sheik and his family ends in disgrace for the force when male officers touched the sheik's wife while trying to protect her, Hu is tasked with creating a female commando squad. Between the recruits not taking it seriously, and the guys in the other training groups not taking them seriously, Hu has her hands full, but she's able to whip them into shape, later with the help of Rothrock. They get their chance to prove what they can do when a famous jewel is on display in Hong Kong, and the force has intel that a gang wants to steal it. Will Hu, Rothrock, and their team be up to the task?

 

This one starts off fantastic, with a great action scene featuring Rothrock and Hu. From there it settles into a kind of Fact of Life or John Hughes movie kind of thing, only with plenty of Hong Kong physical humor, and then finishes off with more high-octane action scenes. At first I was like "what's happening here?" but I started to lean into it and liked the idea of an 80s John Hughes movie featuring action like this. Imagine Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy kicking ass and taking names between scenes of hijinx at the high school or a local hangout. Not only that, but Ringwald and Sheedy doing all their stunts! I don't know that this is the first movie for someone who is new to Rothrock or new to 80s Hong Kong cinema, but I liked the idea of it, and Rothrock and Hu were fantastic in their martial arts scenes.

40 movies for Cynthia Rothrock. The first film of hers we covered was X-treme Fighter aka Sci-Fighter, which was a lackluster effort that also starred Lorenzo Lamas and Don "The Dragon" Wilson. That was back in March of 2008, so almost a year after we'd started the site. I think part of the reason why it took so long to get a film of hers up was classics like China O'Brien were harder to come by. Now we have Hong Kong movies like this available on Tubi, so hopefully this is a sign that more of her stuff will get Blu-ray releases or just become easier to get overall. One thing that makes this movie a good one to post for this honor, is it really showcases her high level of skill and athleticism. She's scaling walls, kicking grenades back at baddies, and dodging axes and swords. She's truly one of the best to ever do it, and it's as evident here as it is in any of her films.

 

Rothrock was more the co-star, with Sibelle Hu as more of the lead. I knew of her before this one, but I'm not as up on Hong Kong films, so I can't tell what else I've seen her in. The character she plays here, Madam Wu, was spun-off from a role she played in other Hong Kong films with stars like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, and which she played in sequels to this movie. I haven't seen any of those, as I haven't really delved into Hong Kong cinema as much as I should have, I kind of come to it more when stars like Rothrock are in a movie. Again, with the availability of more of these films either on Blu-ray, through streamers like Tubi, or archived by a user on YouTube, there's a lot for me to get into, and some of the ones Hu has done look like good places to start, because she was great here too.

The construct of this film is interesting, because it replaces some of the action with more comedic scenes, so the rhythm of an action scene every 10 minutes or so is thrown off a bit. By the same token, it deals with ideas like chauvinism--from a story standpoint in the police department, but metaphorically in the action movie realm--but unfortunately the message didn't make it across the pond in any substantial way. Rothrock herself never quite had that success she deserved, in part I think because American action filmmakers at the highest levels didn't know what to make of her as an action lead. All they needed to do was watch a film like this and it would've told them what to think. As we got into the 90s, we had one-off films with female action leads, and then we had DTV franchises led by Rothrock, or Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies movies that were led by Dona Speir and then Julie Strain; but it's some time before we start to get Milla Jovovich doing Resident Evil movies in 2002.

 

And that gets me to this last paragraph of where we put Rothrock all time among action leads. In the DTV world, I only have Dolph and Fred Williamson ahead of her, and I think she and Wilson are tied for third behind those two. I have her third all-time among female action leads as well, behind Pam Grier and Michelle Yeoh, and then I think Zoe Saldana and Milla Jovovich are right behind her. Among all the action leads I don't know, I've never really done that list out, but it's hard for her with no real big screen movies to compete with names like Schwarzenegger and Stallone--yet by the same token, should we hold the fact that she didn't get the opportunities against her? Had she had the opportunity to make her Commando or even Cobra, do we doubt she would've hit it out of the park? Of course she would have. Unfortunately we can only wonder what if, and enjoy the gems like these that we have from her, especially as the more obscure ones become available.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can stream this for free with ads on Tubi here in the States. That version is Chinese with English subtitles, which is fine for me, but some people prefer English dubs. However you watch it, this is worth checking out. And congratulations to Cynthia Rothrock for becoming the third actor and sixth member overall of the DTVC 40 Club! It's well-deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094694

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Castle Falls (2021)

This is one we were all excited for. Dolph, Adkins, directed by Dolph, it had to be good. Then the pandemic hit and production was delayed. Once we finally got it, I was looking to rent it, when suddenly it appeared on Pluto for free! With that, I decided to do a mini Adkins fest, watching this, The Eliminators, Hard Target 2, and One Shot, and talked about all of them in a solo podcast episode a few months back. In addition to us, this doesn't have as many critic reviews as you'd think, but our friend Todd Gaines at Bulletproof has done this too.

Castle Falls has Adkins as a down-on-his-luck MMA fighter who is living out of his truck in Birmingham, AL, and takes a construction job destroying an old hospital pre-demolition. Dolph plays a prison guard whose daughter's cancer treatments aren't covered by their insurance. When he hears that a baddie hid millions in drug money in the building, he goes to seek it out, the problem is, Adkins already stumbled upon it. Things get worse when the baddies also come to get their money, and now Adkins and Lundgren have to team up to take these guys down, and get out with the money alive.

The last 45 minutes of this is exactly what I came for. Dolph and Adkins getting after it, fighting each other, fighting baddies, interacting with the unique environment, Marx Brothers-style "who's got the bag?" intrigue, it all worked. The problem is, getting to that last 45 minutes we have 45 minutes of padding that felt long. I don't know how you mitigate that though, and maybe it's just a necessary evil to a film like this--though we recently reviewed Nemesis, a home invasion movie that mitigated the same issue really well, so who knows. Ultimately we get the payoff we wanted at the end of the film, so maybe when you've got Dolph and Adkins, that's enough--especially considering we have one like Legendary out there.

We're now at 63 films for Dolph on the site. He'll be 66 years old in November, so I don't know if we'll get three more up by then, but definitely over the next year, which will make him the first star who has as many films reviewed as he's had years on the planet. One of many distinctions Dolph's had as the Babe Ruth of DTV films. (If you're wondering, Gary Daniels is 59 and has 55 films on the site, so he's the next closest to that distinction.) The other list Dolph is slowly creeping up on is the directors list, with this being his seventh directed film on the site. Obviously Albert Pyun doesn't have to worry about him catching him, and he probably won't get near guys like Fred Olen Ray, Jesse V. Johnson, or Isaac Florentine--or maybe even a Keoni Waxman--but he could be a part of another exclusive club, the 20-10 Club for people who have 20+ acting credits and 10+ directing credits on the site. Right now no one's in that club, but Fred Williamson is poised to get there, as he has 9 director credits on the site so far. Another reason why this is important, is Dolph's directed movies, especially his recent ones, tend to be better films from him. The next one on the docket is Wanted Man, which is listed in post production, so hopefully we'll get that soon and it'll be another good one. Beyond that, the question is, can Dolph make 70 movies on the site? By my count, we have Kindergarten Cop 2 and 4Got10 in the can and ready to review, plus Pups Alone now available on the Roku Channel to stream. Beyond that, we could always do Expendables 3, Sharknado 5, Seal Team, and Small Apartments, plus we have a bunch of stuff, including Wanted Man, in post production coming out next year, so it's more a matter of when not if for the 70 Club, which he'll be in by himself like he is now in the 60 Club.

Scott Adkins has a ways to go to catch Dolph, but not for a lack of work. This is now 22 for him here, but I have another 5 watched that I need to review, plus he has a bunch out there that I need to watch--one of which is a Netflix movie he did with Jamie Foxx that's almost 2 hours long, so I probably won't be doing that one anytime soon. There are a few things going on here that really work for Adkins: one, he's a Brit, and while he has a good American accent, he's better as a Brit, and I like when movies allow him to do that; two, it's the same great action we came for from him, even if we have to wait 45 minutes for it to really happen; and three, he and Dolph have great chemistry, but that's not saying a lot because he has great chemistry with Michael Jai White, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Louis Mandylor, Stu Bennett--essentially everyone he works with. The fact that he can work well with so many other stars means the sky's the limit for what he can do, it's really a matter of what the film is able to give him. At the very least, this movie delivers on the promise of he and Dolph on the tin. As we near the 30 Club and Hall of Fame consideration for him, it'll be interesting to see how he grows as an action star, and see him rise up the list of best all time.

For people living outside the US, the idea that Dolph needed money for a cancer treatment that wasn't covered by his health insurance may sound far fetched, but here in the US it's pretty common. We often see real life situations where communities need to raise money to cover the costs insurance companies won't bother with--and news organizations help carry water for the insurance companies by spinning these stories as "heart-warming" instead of horrible that the greatest economic power in the world can't care for its own citizens and is beholden to a massive private health insurance lobby that treats humans as bottom lines and dividends for stock holders as opposed to actual human beings. Yes, it makes for a great plot device in an action movie, but the reality of it here in the US is much more tragic, as many households--mine included--have to wrestle with large healthcare bills on top of what we already pay in premiums every month. If you're outside the US, you're probably wondering why Americans put up with this, why many Americans even vote against universal healthcare? It's because too many of us are afraid of being called "socialists," and most of those that are afraid of being called "socialists" don't even understand what the term means, but it means they'd rather be denied health coverage or have to pay out the nose for it, and as a result, we all suffer. But hey, at least it works as a plot device in an action movie, so there's that.

Speaking of that plot device, Dolph's daughter was played by his actual daughter, Ida. This is actually the second time we've seen her here, the other being Dolph's Command Performance. In terms of DTV stars using their children, we've seen this the most with Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose son Kris has been in like 8 or 9 films of Van Damme's we've covered here. Another one that comes to mind is Seagal and his daughter Ayako who were in The Patriot together; and recently we saw Val Kilmer in Paydirt do some scenes with his daughter Mercedes. It's a cool thing to see these names we grew up with who are now older being able to do these films with adult children--though with Seagal, his daughter is the same age as me, and that film was made in the 90s, so maybe that doesn't fit like the rest do. The best out of all of them is Van Damme with his son Kris, because they have fight scenes; but with Dolph, I can only imagine what it's like doing scenes where he has to imagine his daughter has terminal cancer. I think that element helped the movie though, as his ability to lean into those scenes gave the character that much more depth to make us root for him and want this all to work out for him--though when do we not ever root for Dolph?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, this is available on Tubi, Pluto, and Shout! Factory TV on Prime here in the States. Streaming as part of your subscription package or free with ads is probably the way to go, though if you're looking for a Saturday night movie and can only rent it on demand, it might be worth it. The last 45 minutes is the great Dolph and Adkins action we came for.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11377298

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!